Session: #154

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
The archaeology of material culture, bodies and landscapes
Session format:
Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each

Title & Content

Title:
Manipulated bodies: Case studies of post-mortem interactions with human remains
Content:
Following death, the human body becomes the focus of a diverse range of activities conducted by the living. While burial in an earthen grave in a location designated for the disposal of the dead has been normative practice throughout the past in many locations across Europe, there are also a multitude of other ways in which the dead have been, and continue to be, managed. These include non-burial forms of funerary treatment, intentional exhumations, the responses to unintentional disturbances and forms of collection and curation of human remains. From bones in ossuaries and human remains in museum collections to puzzling body parts discovered beneath prehistoric houses, people have been curating others throughout the centuries. What can we learn from such post-mortem biographies, and what are the challenges faced by archaeologists and curators? This session aims to highlight potential comparative perspectives across social, cultural and temporal contexts, thereby examining the reasons why, contexts within and means by which the material body is manipulated after death.

This session seeks to draw together applied research and cases studies that examine post-mortem interactions with the dead and the archaeological body. It will run alongside the more theoretically inclined “Boundary bodies: Critically thinking the body in contemporary (osteo)archaeology”.
Keywords:
Bodies, Osteology, Funerary, Human Remains
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no

Organisers

Main organiser:
Dr. Elizabeth Craig-Atkins (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Dr Alexandra Ion (United Kingdom) 2
Associate Professor Marianne Hem Eriksen (Norway) 3,4
Affiliations:
1. University of Sheffield
2. Institute of Anthropology Francisc I. Rainer of the Romanian Academy
3. University of Oslo
4. University of Cambridge